Wireless communication devices have become ubiquitous. Devices such as wireless telephones include so-called mobile station modems (MSM) that essentially are wireless communication computers which, like all digital computers, execute software to undertake the functions desired by the user.
Among the functions telephones, including wireless telephones, can undertake is facilitating text entry by a user. More particularly, it is sometimes the case that a user calling another party will be prompted to enter short text messages, such as when a person telephones a company and is directed by an automated system to enter the letters of the name of the person sought to be reached. This can be accomplished by depressing the number keys 2-9, which are correlated to letters.
Because each number key corresponds to three and in some cases four letters, however, provision must be made for allowing the user to select the desired one of the three or four letters represented by a number key. One way this is accomplished is through multitap, wherein the user depresses the relevant number key once for the first letter represented by the key, twice for the second, etc. This approach suffers the drawback of requiring up to four taps for one letter, and it also requires a user to wait until a timeout period has elapsed to select two or more letters in a row from the same key.
Another method for facilitating text entry using a telephone number pad is to provide an electronic dictionary in the phone that can be searched using heuristic algorithms to find a match for an entered sequence of key strokes. If more than one match is possible, the candidates are presented on a display to allow the user to select the intended text string. This can be cumbersome, and storing an electronic dictionary can consume considerable data storage resources in the phone. Moreover, in the case of names, for instance, which do not appear in the dictionary, the desired string might not be returned at all. Having made these critical observations, the present invention is provided.